A Life as Evidence
Toland frames the whole work as a piece of advocacy for her sex before it is a history of her death. He insists he is writing 'as full as antient Books afford us Materials' precisely because the facts, once assembled, argue for themselves. The murder that closes the story only sharpens the contrast he wants readers to feel: unmatched accomplishment met with unmatched savagery.
who will ever continue the Glory of her own Sex, and the Disgrace of ours
Unanimous Testimony
His method is cumulative: he stacks up Synesius, Socrates Scholasticus, Philostorgius, Damascius, Suidas and others, none of them friendly to one another's theology, all agreeing on Hypatia's supremacy in learning. For Toland, a deist writing in an age still arguing over women's capacity for reason, the unanimity of hostile witnesses is the strongest kind of evidence — nobody with a motive to diminish her ever tried.
she arrived to such a Pitch of Learning, as very far to exceed all the Philosophers of her time
The Chair No Man Contested
When Hypatia succeeds to the headship of the Platonic school at Alexandria, Toland lingers on what that appointment meant: a woman preferred over every learned man in a city famous for them, at a Chair once held by Ammonius and Hierocles. He reads her elevation not as an exception the age tolerated but as a verdict the age could not honestly avoid.
Drawn from Chapters I, III, and IV of Toland's Hypatia (1720), which open the pamphlet by establishing her learning before turning to the circumstances of her death.
Related Concepts
